


Runaways

by welseykels



Series: Dragon Age: Emmalee Trevelyan [8]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Floor Sex, Goodbye Sex, Oral Sex, Sexual Content, Smut, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-21
Updated: 2016-08-21
Packaged: 2018-08-10 05:32:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7832293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/welseykels/pseuds/welseykels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cullen spends the night with his Inquisitor, before she is to face Corypheus for the final time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Runaways

**Author's Note:**

> [Check out my writing masterpage on tumblr!](https://welseykels.tumblr.com/writing)

They speak often of running away.

It’s talk and nothing more.  There is never any intention to act on their hopes - more resting on their shoulders than their simple happiness together – but they talk about it all the same, grand ideas that will likely never see the outside of Cullen’s tower walls - or hers. Sometimes they dream that they’ll pack two horses in the night and travel as far as they can from the hole in the sky and every void-ridden thing that’s been connected to it.

But she leaves on the morrow instead, and he doesn’t know if he will ever hold her, much less see her alive after tonight.  It’s the same worry whenever she leaves – not only as her partner, but as the Commander of her army.  Tomorrow itself is different;  _ tomorrow she ends all this for good _ .

He hangs all his hopes on a woman he doesn’t fully trust – not on the Inquisitor, but another - on a woman who says she knows the key to their victory from what she gleaned at Mythal.  All his years of training screams at him that he cannot put his future in the hands of a fabled Witch of the Wilds – but he knows that he must.  He knows he would not be the first to do so -  _ he’s heard the rumours about the wardens and the origins of Morrigan’s son  _ \- but he doesn’t have much choice anyhow.

_ The very future of Thedas rests on the shoulders of so very few _ .  

It pains him that the bulk of their army is still in the Arbor Wilds, pains him that he must stay behind to ensure Skyhold continues to stand if their plans fail.  He knows with certainty he can’t fight at her side, so to her side is where he goes now.

He feels guilty; the Inquisitor should be resting – _ they both should be _ – but he already finds himself through the rotunda and to the main hall of Skyhold’s keep.  And for once, he doesn’t feel the sweat on his palms or the light feeling in his stomach as he strides towards the door to her quarters among the crowd of nobles and Inquisition agents alike.  Usually, he would carry a stack of papers with him, time alone disguised as war planning. Tonight he has no excuses to hide behind; tonight he doesn’t quite care. There are no papers in his hand, no uniform of the Commander, just a man dressed in plain breeches and shirt wanting to see the woman he has come to love.   _ That he does love _ .

He latches the lock once he’s through, testing it once, twice, three times before he’s satisfied it’s clasped before he starts up the stairs.  He takes them two at a time, startled when he sees the door at the very top of the tower to her chambers slightly ajar.  He doesn’t knock then, but finds shattered glass halfway up the stairs - the telltale stain of wine - or blood? - is pooled around the shards and he’s up the remaining steps in merely seconds.

He should have never left her alone tonight, even for a moment. Of course there could be a struggle,  _ an assassin even _ , and no one would ever know or hear her up here in her tower. Of course their enemy would want to snuff out any chance before a confronta-

She is seated on the floor by the foot of her bed, legs drawn up to her chest as she stares ahead at the fire burning in the hearth.  The bottle of wine that had filled the shattered glass still sits beside her.  Her eyes are unfocused, lost in her own thoughts as low crackles and pops fill the room. The fire is too warm for the evening, but he doesn’t question it.  He knows she knows this, the doors to her balconies flung open, providing cool air into the room to combat the heat of the flames. He knows the feeling all too well.  

She simply just needs to feel… anything really. Anything before tomorrow might be too late to feel anything more.

He sits beside her, back pressed against the footboard of her canopied bed, and he draws her into his lap. Her tears truly start then. She clutches onto the fabric near his belly and he can feel a damp patch growing just over his heart.  He holds her until the sun sets below the mountains, until her tears are spent and her breaths come in anguished hiccups.  He holds her long after her breathing calms, long after the hearth has died down to almost embers.

Her voice is barely there against his neck, her fingers never wavering in their grip against him.  “I don’t – I don’t want to die.”

He doesn’t quite know what to say, is rendered speechless by the way her voice cracks and shatters over the words.  His hands runs lines down her back, slow - and soothing, he isn’t sure if it’s just for her or for them both.  Finally, he finds his words, willing his voice to sound steady and sure. He needs them to.  “You will come back.”

“Is that an order, Commander?”  A glimmer of hope - the same he’d seen as she’d caught him praying in the Chantry - shone just behind the tears.  As if she’d needed to hear him say it, believing his faith in her - more than the faith she had for herself.

His lip pulls up at the corner, a lopsided grin that most in the Inquisition had not seen, that most in Kirkwall hadn’t.  He had been without that smile for years.  But she had seen it, he had lost track of how many times in the past months.  He hopes it helps to reassure her, that he believes in her - in her success - more than he can put into words.  “I believe it is.”

Her hand brushes his cheek, lips pressing softly against his.  She deepens the kiss quickly, and he is more than happy to open to her.  He needs to feel her just as much as she needs him.  His tongue brushes past the gap between her front teeth and his heart breaks when he thinks that it was one of the first things he’d noticed about her, one of the first things he’d come to love about her.

She’s leaning back against the carpet, pulling him with her until he is nestled between her thighs, hands running over the thin fabric of her nightgown, drawing a moan from deep in her throat when a thumb brushes against the peak of one of her breasts.

“Please, Cullen.  I need -”

Kisses rain across her skin in tiny droplets, breaths whispering against her. He remembers the first days of their attraction, shy glances and broken sentences, so unsure that the other felt the same or as deeply. Now he's sure, certain of her returned affections -  _ of their mutual love _ .  He’s sure that she has become a constant in his life, just as he hopes he has become one in hers.  The shyness has melted away to something new, a trust that goes beyond any he had ever expected, farther than he had ever hoped since he had left the order.

She hasn't seen the very worst of his days, a string of endless hours of pain and want as he fought the cravings on a ship back to Ferelden. It had taken three days for him to reach that point that he was ready to break from the craving and he thanks the Maker that Cassandra had been at his side then.

But his love has seen dangerously close. She's held him through the harsher nights, the steady rise and fall of her chest supporting the erratic staccato of his own when he sees the violet haze around him, when he wakes from the endless screams - more often his own than not. She sits with him on the floor of her balcony, letting him breathe the mountain air and stare off into the endless horizon as she holds him.

They never stay inside on those nights - he can't, and she -  _ he will never thank the Maker enough for leading them together _ \- follows.  He feels safe in her arms, his back pressed against her as she strokes the hair back from his sweat-slicked forehead. She's careful to never use her fingernails on those nights across his skin – knows he cannot have that, as much as he likes the feel of them against his scalp on the good days.

Even on the nights it rains or snows, they’re there.  She’s had a small awning installed on one of the balconies, telling the quartermaster only that the sun made it too hot out there some days where she liked to write her reports.  No one but Cullen knew that she always wrote her reports inside at her desk, never outside.  A small lie for his -  _ their _ \- privacy.

On the worst of mornings – if his hands still shake – she’ll help him shave, style his hair with the pomade he now keeps a spare tin of in her quarters, and aid in dressing him in his armour.  He’s never felt embarrassed as she does so, she does it with a patience and love he had never expected to find from another.  A love he’s still not quite sure he deserves. 

She presses kisses against his skin before she covers it with his clothes. She doesn’t offer any words – knows he wouldn’t want to hear them out of fear of pity, not that that would be what she would offer him – but she hums quietly, old songs from his homeland that he’s taught her.  Sometimes she’s hums some of the Chant of Light, he’s taught her that too. She herself is neither Ferelden nor Andrastian.  It helps bring him some small bit of peace on those mornings when she does so.  He hopes he offers her at least a small offering of the same that she gives him.

But it’s not always him who wakes in screams, there are sometimes in the darkness where he holds her as the nightmares of Haven and the horrors she has seen take hold of her slumber, when the anchor flares and pain runs from her palm to her heart, when the burden of leading the Inquisition weighs far too heavy on her small shoulders.  On those nights it’s his turn to help, to sit and hold, to offer small words of love.  _ To comfort _ . Those are the nights they plot to runaway. It warms him when those talks bring the barest of smiles back to her face and he hopes someday that that life away from immense burden will become a reality for them both.

But with their duties now, he's come to dread even more so the nights he has to face himself - _ alone _ \- when she's not there to ground him back to Skyhold.  He had endured without her, as she has without him, but he finds that he fears facing a life without her now, if not for anything but the easy companionship they have built - for the love they have.

The wounds in their souls may never heal, but they ache less when they are together.

“Please.  Cullen, please.”  It’s her voice that snaps him back to the present – to her soft frame below him.  She presses kisses along his collarbone where it peaks out from his shirt, hands moving under the hem at his hips as she pulled it upward revealing more and more of his skin.

“ _ Please _ .”

He isn’t sure that it’s right that he takes her on the rug rather than the bed if he truly is saying goodbye, but they’ll get there eventually he thinks.

He bares her slowly, taking great care with lifting the thin material of her night-dress up her body.  He kisses each new place exposed, never lingering as he works his way back to her lips.   He commits every piece of her to memory – as he has many nights and days before – but now is when it truly matters, he wants to recall forever just how she looks under the light of the dying fire tonight.

Even if the lyrium comes for him in the end – and he knows there is a strong chance it will – he swears to never forget this.  He will cling to this night like a raft, either if he is alone or has her by his side. This night and that first night together back at the Winter Palace.

He kisses the army of freckles that war their way across her skin, vows then and there that before he dies he will to press his lips to each and every single one.  He hopes he will have years –  _ decades _ – to accomplish this.  He whispers the vow out loud and is treated to her lashes fluttering open, a full smile finding its way finally to her face.

He works his way down her body once they are both completely bare. His lips and hands touching as much of her as he can.  When he tastes her, it’s with the cool air from the open doors caressing their bare skin, with her moans louder than the crackle and pops of the fire as it slowly dies from neglect.  He will not neglect a single inch of her, not as she shudders and stiffens from release, not as she begs for even more contact.

He means to be slow, to savour the touch of her, to be attentive to her.  And he is at first - it is she who urges him on.  Urges him back up her body, urges for more, faster, harder. He buries his face in the crook of her neck as he moves.  He needs to be close –  _ closer _ – as he breathes her in, as he tastes the salt on the skin of her collarbone with his tongue, as he feels the way she flutters around him once he presses himself inside.

He isn’t sure whose tears are wetting their skin, he assumes they belong to them both.  He doesn’t stay long at each part of her he touches, until his fingers work between them, to just above where they are joined.  He savours her cries as he brings her to the edge as many times as he can before he feels the end of his stamina in the distance.  

Her hands are on his shoulders, his cheeks, his arse, as she holds her to him.  He knows she too is trying to commit this moment to memory.  She has always preferred the hard press of him atop her, and so he loosens a little more weight from his elbow beside her face and a little more onto her.  He can feel every bit of her against him and he prays that this is not the last time he will feel this way.

_ She will come back.  She will come back.  She will come back. _

He murmurs this chant against her skin, her voice mingling with his as she promises to return.  To not leave him alone in this world without her.  Her voice breaks as she cups his face in her hands, gaze meeting his as she vows to come back.

He rests his forehead against the silvered face of Andraste that rests between her breasts when he finishes, hips stilling until they rest against hers once more.  His breaths pant out against her ribcage, drawing a shiver of overstimulation from her. He withdraws, gently rolling them until she is tucked into his side.  With the fire now fully out, their sweat-slicked skin cools quickly, and so he reaches up, to the edge of the bed where he sees the simple throw blanket resting atop it.  He puts it over them both, doesn’t know how long they lay there until he hears her breathing finally even.

He traces the way the moonlight filters through the windows onto her cheek, the colourful glass creating patterns that would be brighter in day, but he knows the shapes.  She’d chosen a Ferelden motif for him, after the Winter Palace and their first night together. It was something to remind him of his home she’d said. He sees little of the Free Marches in her quarters, her own homeland.

Instead, her quarters are a kaleidoscope of souvenirs from her travels.  The desk is simple and Ferelden like his own – he nearly blushes at the thought of how the two have been tested to be similarly sturdy.  The decorations of the fireplace are a mish-mash of each place she’s been with the Inquisition, a shell from the Stormcoast, a jar of water and plants from the Oasis, another of sand from the Western Approach. There's a pot of Amartia Vein from the Wastes, a Halla statue from Orlais, countless other treasures she had collected on her journeys across southern Thedas. Sometimes he found it hard to remember she'd spent over half of her life in a circle, not with the way she has travelled now. 

He leaves the doors open as he rolls away from her sleeping embrace, standing slowly.  He risks waking her to move them onto her bed.  He can’t have the leader of the Inquisition regretting aches from sleeping on her floor the night before she may not return.  He thanks the Maker when she hardly stirs as he places her among the blankets and furs.  

Her bed is a horrid Orlesian thing, but even he can't deny it has served them both well.  It’s one of his last thoughts before he too falls into the Fade, the last being about the way she feels next to him.

_ They make love again in the night _ .

He hadn’t meant to wake her.  He had only lifted the hand that was wrapped around his middle to his lips, pressing a kiss into the palm, when he had woken from another dream.  He wants to memorize the way she feels curled against his back, her arms around him, her dark curls splayed out and tickling the back of his neck.  But he feels the sharp intake of breath as she’s pulled back from the Fade to him against his shoulder blades.  Then he feels her lips take its place. 

They’d both watched their fingers twine together as she maneuvered him over and behind her.  He’s slightly disappointed at first that they aren’t face to face, but he revels in the feeling of skin on skin.  She moans and shatters beneath him, his body, his hands, his mouth.  He turns her in his arms after, chest to chest as he finds his own end.  He kisses her slowly, softly, as if it may be the last time he gets to hold her before sleep comes for them once more.

She eases out of bed come morning, waking him when he doesn’t feel the warm press of her any longer against his back.  He watches her dress, watches her pack, watches her eyes drifting to him over and over as if she’s trying to commit the sight of him dishevelled and loved into her memory.

He dresses when she’s almost done, holding her hand as they walk down the steps of her tower.  Before he dares unlatch the door and enter the main hall, he pulls her to him.  He doesn’t know how long they stay like that, her head tucked under his chin, until a knock comes from the other side of the door.

He hears Cassandra’s voice, but he doesn’t catch the words she says, too lost in the feel of her against him as he presses one last desperate kiss to her lips.

His heart falls deep into the pit of his belly when he has to let go of her as they walk through the doors.  His hand aches, wanting to hold hers as they march through the main keep – thankfully it is too early for the stares of many onlookers as he does.  Her fingers curl over his as his thumb rubs circles over the back of her palm.

He walks with her to the stables, until she is high upon her horse and she mouths words of her love for him as everyone is preoccupied with their own farewells. 

And then she is gone out the gates, her inner circle in tow. 

When he cannot see her shape on the mountain any longer, he turns away, feet sure of their destination as he walks through the courtyard, through the main hall, the garden, and finally to the small Chantry she has kept for those who need their faith.

He prays.

He prays for Thedas; he prays for the Inquisition.  _ But mostly, he prays for her.  _


End file.
